NekoJonez’s December 2020 Update

We are in the final days of 2020 and my lord, what a year it has been. I think it’s high time to talk about my plans for 2021 and the future in the form of an update article. What has been going on in my personal life and what will the future bring? Well, let’s dive right into the updates!

Personal updates

Let’s start off with the personal updates. First of all, I have to bring the news that my car broke down after 10+ years of service. I bought myself a Citroen C3 in red. I’ll post pictures on my Twitter when it arrives next month. While I could get it serviced and fixed, the cost of the repair would be way higher than the value of the car if I would sell it today. So, that’s why I decided to purchase my very own car. The car I was driving was my mother’s old car which my sister and I used to learn how to drive.

Now, this car became my car when I moved to my apartment. Yes, I’m now living on my own. Honestly, I don’t live alone since Troy moved in with me. Currently, he is sleeping in one of my spare relax chairs while I’m writing this article. He keeps me company while I’m playing games, researching, writing articles and doing stuff in my apartment.

In earlier update articles, I talked about me starting my dream job last year. A year ago, I started working as an IT-admin at an art school. This is a dream that came true since I always wanted to combine my passion for technology and education and the fact that it’s in art secondary school is just an amazing bonus since I see so much great art that’s being produced by our students.

Currently, I’m doing this job full time. One of my bigger projects is revamping the website of the school, being a first line support for tech issues, automating and optimizing processes and many other things. Now, this means that a lot of my time and energy goes to my job that I love doing. I’ll talk a bit more on what this means for my schedule later in this update article.

The final personal update I can give is that I’m doing a tech clean-up. What I mean with that is that I’m upgrading everything from a better monitor and equipment to play (retro) games to throwing away things that don’t work anymore or don’t have any purpose being stored in my drawers.

For example, I tried to install Windows 98SE recently on an IBM PC I had laying around. Sadly enough, during the installation I discovered that the sound chip was broken. I don’t have the expertise nor do I have the knowledge to fix motherboards. On top of that, due to some malfunction in the case, one of the IDE cables decided to melt to the power brick and part of the motherboard. Yeah, that computer is dead now.

I’m also throwing out old spare laptops that I kept for spare parts. I did recover some laptops to give to students who don’t have the money nor the budget to get their computer. That way they could follow the classes during the COVID lockdowns. But some devices were too old for that, so they go to our local tech recycle center.

Now, in terms of upgrades I got myself a new computer monitor for example.  Currently, I’m using the ASUS TUF Gaming VG27VQ and as a second monitor I’m using an Iiyama Prolite GE2488HS. I’m considering upgrading my Iiyama monitor but on the other hand, I use this monitor since it has a VGA port I can use for my retro computers to play older games on. But I love the curved nature of my new Asus monitor and the high refresh rate give the games I play on it such a nicer experience.

Currently, I upgraded my router to an Asus ROG one and the additional security features it gives me in my next work are just amazing. And for obvious reasons I won’t be talking about how I set-up my network. Something I’m going to talk about is that I upgraded my Asus Zenfone 3 to an Asus Zenfone 7. And let me tell you, what a difference it makes. The Zenfone 7 is one of the best phones I ever used, it helps me to do work on the go and the battery lasts me such a long time it’s crazy. I also upgraded my TV and printer. Living alone is such a great experience. Now, I have total control over my network and devices to the extend I want.

With that said, I think it’s high time to shift the focus over to the updates in terms of my blog and what the future will bring in 2021. Since it won’t be a surprise that the remaining articles of this year will be my top 10 games of 2020 and the games I’m looking forward to play in 2021. Of course, it’s possible that I finish an article on a game and/or a developer request in the meantime and publish it.

Blog news

I turned 27 years old/young this year. That means, I have been blogging for 10 years this year. Yes, I started my Dutch blog that preceded this blog in late 2010. I rebranded myself in 2013 to this English blog and I haven’t stopped since. I haven’t done anything special since I really didn’t have the time nor a good idea to celebrate my 10 years in the community.

Maybe I’ll write something unique and special next year or when I hit 10 years of blogging on this blog but only time will tell. Since I can’t promise I’ll be able to write weekly anymore.

Due to my focus on my job and me living on my own, that means that the time I have to play games, research them, write and edit my articles is rather limited. I honestly thought that I wrote way less articles this year compared the to previous years but color me surprised that I wrote almost 52 articles this year when everything will be said and done. Granted, I wrote close to 90 articles last year but I publishing various press kits this year so I think that number is a bit inflated. Also, I put a lot more work and effort into the articles I write compared to last year.

So, I won’t promise that I’ll be able to write an article every week in 2021. I won’t be able to promise that I might be able to write more than one article during my vacation times. From a personal experiment I found that not forcing myself to write weekly and trying to push out an article in a weekend create a not-so-good article in the end.

Does this mean I have a more loose schedule? Well, I haven’t fully decided on that yet. Honestly, I don’t really think that will be case at this moment in time. I think you might see less articles when my personal life gets quite busy like when my acting group can restart after the COVID lockdowns and when things get quite hectic at work (like when we have an open school day).

I also want to do more community events in 2021. I felt that I missed a lot of amazing collabs and events in 2020 due to my busy personal schedule. So, if you are organizing a blogging community event, feel free to tag me on Twitter, DM or mail me. When I can fit it in my schedule I’ll.

The last thing I want to give you guys and girls an update about is the Pokémon Retrospective Collab. At this moment, we have 12 writers (including myself). We also have found a name for the collab. The name that we currently have agreed upon is “Creator’s Catch” and the current publishing date will be the 27th of February. That would be the 25th anniversary of Pokémon Red & Green in Japan.

Now, if you are still interested in joining this collab, there are still some spin-offs open. At the moment of writing, the Rumble series, Trozei, Puzzle, PokePark amongst one time spin off games are still open. Feel free to hit me up if you are interested in joining and join our lovely collab.

Oh, I’m forgetting about one thing. And that are the updates to the old articles. Currently, I’m updating these old articles whenever I have the time and feeling like updating them. As stated before, I don’t want to update these articles with new content, I only want to fix up grammar and spelling mistakes, broken links and images. But, they will be less of a focus of mine. It’s like keeping my overview pages up to date. I still have to work on those…

Phew, that has been everything to update you guys and girls about. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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Creative Christmas 2020 – Let’s Get Mage-ing

It’s that time of the year again, it’s time to wrap up the year and talk about what a year it has been. Yet, it’s also the time of year were we are thankful and celebrate with family and friends. Way back in 2017, I was a part of LaterLevel’s Christmas Collab. The Christmas collab this year isn’t structured like that, it’s more structered like the collab I was a part of in 2019. In that collab, I wrote an article about a nice blogger called Everwake. Now, this year, I have gotten somebody else and I’ll talk more about that later. First of all, this year the collab hasn’t been organised by LaterLevels but by my mate Chris from OverThinkerY. Just one more thing before I begin, I used the cover of the amazing Pix1001 who got my name. Check out her heartwarming article by following the link. So, this introduction has gone on for too long… Hasn’t it, Winst0lf, buddy?

Character Stats

Blogger & Podcaster

He is a part of the Well Red Mage crew under the name of “The Bizzaro Mage”

 

Born on the 12th of November in the UK. 

Real name: Craig Rathbone (Instagram)

So, for this collab, he submitted his review of Chris’ book called Each Little Universe.

It’s a present time

To be honest, I haven’t read the article for the simple reason that it’s a spoiler filled article of a book of our fellow befriended blogger Chris. As I’m planning to get myself a copy of the book to read in the train, I don’t want to spoil myself. 

To sidetrack a little bit, I worked together with Chris on a written let’s play of 999. During the writing of that series, I got to know Chris a bit better and I’m quite interested in the story he wrote in his writing style. 

Anywho, let’s talk about my buddy Winst0lf. I remember our frequent chats in the Well Red Mage discord about various topics. From blogging and games to various real life things. 

On his blog you can find various articles about games, books, movies and various other subjects. So, if you enjoy geeking out on various subjects, I highly recommend following Winst0lf on his various projects. 

While I was writing this article, I was listing to various episodes of the podcast Shart Select. And I have to say, it’s quite well produced. It’s a shame that I haven’t listened to it before. I now know what to listen to while at work. 

Since I didn’t read the article he submitted for the reasons explained earlier in this article, I skimmed through it and I noticed that his reviews go very in-depth like I enjoy writing my reviews. 

Reviews are something quite important since a lot of people use it to determine if something is for them or not. And if you go in-depth, then you give the best information to your readers. Also, the honesty he writes his articles with shines through his writing.

Happy Holidays Man!

I could write a very lengthy article here about my friend Winst0lf but I think that you are getting the point dear readers. Winst0lf is a great writer and he deserves the spotlight today on my blog. 

 I know that most of my readers come for gaming content and if you want to read his in-depth reviews of certain games, I highly recommend that you check out his page over at the Well Red Mage. 

With that said, I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care… And also, happy holidays Winst0lf!

Game Quicky: One Person Story (Switch) ~ Reflexes At Work

Official Nintendo subsite – Drageus Page

Just like the title of this game, this blog is mostly a one-person story. Most of the articles you can read on this blog are written by NekoJonez, now with that said, I think it’s high time we focus on the game that this article is going to be about. It’s One Person Story by Lampogolovii Leric and ported to the Nintendo Switch by Drageus Games, who provided me a review code for free for this review. This article will have me 100% honest opinion of that game and feel free to leave your opinion about the game in the comment section down below about the content of this article and/or the game.

The good

This game is a puzzle game where you have to guide a square through a pathway. The only control you have is switching between two states of the level. While there isn’t a lot of interaction with the game, the game is rather calming and relaxing to play. It’s a perfect game to wind down or to relax.

Visually, the game is pretty basic but pretty nice to look at. The visuals don’t get too much more involved than what you see in the screenshots but it does the job perfectly. It adds to the atmosphere and the relaxing feeling of the game.

Together with that, you have rather calming music and sound effects. The audiovisual presentation has been nailed in this game. It’s a joy to play and listen too. The music doesn’t restart between levels, which is a great plus. I have seen games that have a similar price point that makes that mistake.

The UI and options menu is just perfect. While you have only one other language to play around with, you can adjust the music and sound effects. The is no way to enable or disable the voice acting, but that’s no big deal. Since the voice acting is pretty decent. I’m able to overlook the fact that there is only one other language in this game, which is strangely enough: Russian. Adding too many different languages would increase the scope of the game and the amount of work as well.

Now, there isn’t a lot of story in this game. It tells the story of how life is. The moments when life is painful, joyful, blissful, annoying, irritating… Losing friends and working together. It’s quite relatable even when my life is far from the same as yours.

It’s amazing to see that this game barely needs any time to load. Thanks to that, you can easily restart a level when you died. You restart right away like in games like Super Meat Boy.

The bad

Now, this game is a rather pleasant game but I don’t think that the Switch is the correct platform for this game. This game is rather repetitive and it would be better suited for the mobile market.

That said, the game also introduces unique mechanics that would be quite interesting for more complex puzzles, but the developer only chose to use them for one or two levels. After that, new or other mechanics get introduced. There is barely any depth in this game or anything else besides pressing the button to move the obstacles out of the way at the right time.

I’m under the impression that this game could have done so much more with the concept but choose to stay this minimalistic. It stays true to the atmosphere and the feel of the game but the game became repetitive and dull for longer play sessions.

There is a sort of level select in this game but it’s rather limited. You can only choose to start at a chapter. It’s quite unclear when a chapter starts and ends. To make matters worse, when you choose to start at a certain chapter and you leave the level… Well, you are in for a nasty surprise. It overwrote your autosave file! I was at level 33 and I was messing around with the chapter menu for this review. When I choose the beginning; before the level even started, I left the level. Then I choose “Start”, fully expecting that I would be able to resume my level 33 progress. But nope, it started me at the beginning.

I can be pretty short about this, but I find this a minor negative worth mentioning. The credits just list the name of the original creator and then that the port has been created by Drageus Studios. But who developed that port in that studio is unknown.

Conclusion

This is a decent game on the wrong platform. This is an excellent game to play in short bursts since the levels can be solved quickly and easily. It’s a perfect relaxing game to play on the bus to school or on the train to work. But, I don’t think that the Switch audience is the correct audience for it.

The game is just too basic, too repetitive for my liking on the Nintendo Switch and that makes it quite difficult for me to recommend. If you enjoy casual games or games that tell a unique story in an easy way, I think that this game might be right up to your alley.

If the game interests you after reading this review, I would say: give it a go! It’s only a few bucks, so it isn’t that expensive. If you didn’t get interested while reading this review, I would skip this game.

Personally, I’m glad that I gave this game a chance since this game pleasantly surprised me. But, I’m quite sure that not everybody will be able to tolerate this kind of casual games. Even while the game shows a lot of promise and just needed a bit more mechanics and polish.

And with that said, I have said everything about this game I wanted to say. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you to another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score as a Switch game: 60/100.

Score, ignoring that its on the Switch: 70/100

PSA: See stolen content from content creators? Content theft!

Today, I had an unpleasant surprise this morning on the train to work. I found out that two websites actually stole my content! This was such a let down since the amount of content that was stolen from me is more than just one article. It’s almost all my articles from December. While I was working on contacting other sites and blogs that got content stolen, a good blogging friend of mine Drakulus wrote this article. And it’s actually a great lesson to learn. 

What do you if you come across stolen content? Do you ignore it? Or do you do something about it? What if the stolen content you come across is yours? 

WordPress is a great place to publish content of all sorts. Some people like to use it as a diary. While others, like myself, us it to express their love for gaming by reviewing games, writing excellent opinion pieces, and being active within the WordPress community. Some people, however, don’t use WordPress for any of those things. They use WordPress to steal other people’s work and post it as their own. They use it to make money by leaving half links to the creator’s blog to avoid suspicion and they use it to attract followers that would have no idea that the content that they’re reading and enjoying belongs to someone else. That’s what we’re here to talk about today. 

A fellow blogger has had a good chunk of his content stolen by two different blogs. The blogger is NekoJonez and he and I decided to write a piece on how to prevent something like this from happening in the future. The blogs in question are wponlinetutorials and proxly. Now I know I can’t accuse someone of theft without proof. How’s this for proof? (original article, written by me)

That post was taken from NekoJonez without his permission and posted on that site. He wasn’t asked by the owner of the blog if it was okay. They just took it and posted it as their own piece of work. That’s not cool and something needs to be done about it and that brings me to the point of this post today. 

NekoJonez note, if you want more proof, just look at the dates of my article about Nintendo Pocket Soccer Club. I published mine on the 10th of December and this ripoff blog published it on the 17th December. Yeah. 

If you want to do something about this to prevent this from happening again we need to look out for each other. We need to report these people that are doing this crap so they’ll know we’re serious about defending our hard work. I don’t know about you, but it takes me a few hours to write a single article sometimes. And if I knew someone was profiting from my work I would be pissed too and that’s why I’m doing this. I went through both blogs and noticed a lot of stolen content. Most of it is from NekoJonez, but other blogs were stolen from too. 

We’re bringing this issue to light and you can too by opposing this. Stealing is bad and shouldn’t be tolerated. Help us take these guys down by reporting them to WordPress. Click here to file a complaint. If enough people come forward and do this WordPress is going to have to force this person to remove all their stolen content or remove their blog completely. 

Let’s stand together and defend our work from thieves that are looking to profit from it.

NekoJonez here again. So if you notice other blogs or websites just copy and pasting somebody else’s content without using it in a good context, notify the content creator as quickly as you can. Personally, I wouldn’t mind people quoting me or using excerpts from my article to talk about their points, but if you copy the whole article, that’s another story. The content creator always needs to give permission before you use it, it’s just etiquette. 

I really want to thank everybody who already helped me file complaints about this so we can resolve this issue as soon as we can. I’m really thankful to all other bloggers who actually reported the stolen content as well so this will be resolved.

If you notice my content ever being stolen from another blog, use my contact page/DM me on Twitter or any other social media platform.

If you notice other blogger’s content that gets stolen, like I said before, contact the blogger in question before you take action. If the content owner wants you to report it as well, he or she will ask.

Also, try to not make a big fuss about it at first. Why am I saying this? The reasons are simple, don’t wake sleeping dogs AND don’t give a website unneeded traffic. Who knows, they might have a system with links set up, that every time they get clicked they earn money.

I think I can speak for all of us content creators here, we are always thankful that our audience reports stolen content to us. This way we can avoid people abusing our content and avoiding creators giving up on following their passion!

It’s never fun to see your content stolen since you put your time and effort into it. Having to deal with researching, contacting hosts and WordPress and other blogs who got content stolen is so time-consuming and you lose time spent elsewhere in your life. On the other hand, you could argue that we shouldn’t care, but what’s the point then of writing content again?

Thank you for reading this PSA written by me and Drakulus. Thanks for all the support and help! Feel free to tweet this article out, share it on Facebook or on any social media platform so we can raise awareness of this issue and start fighting it.

(PS: How ironic would it be if this article gets stolen from NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog and posted on one of those bot/stealing websites)

Creative Christmas #12 – Game Of The Year (2017)

Yesterday was the final day of double articles since the holidays are almost over for me. So, I to start today with is the final article in the creative Christmas collab I did with LaterLevels. It was quite an enjoyable ride and I hope you all enjoyed the stories told in the past few days. The question for today is a question that sort of relates to yesterday’s article where I talked about my favorite games of 2017. Now, I have to make a hard decision. Just look at the question to understand why. Also, remember, this is my opinion here okay? 

You wake up the following morning, hungover but happy – you have an entire day of gaming ahead of you. You start thinking back over the video games you played during 2017; what was your game of the year?

This year had a lot of great games released. While I haven’t played them all, I do have to admit that I had a lot of fun. While I personally dislike picking one game and putting it at number one, to say it’s the best game made that year; I’m going to do my best this time to pick a winner.

So, the rules for myself here are: the game had to be released in 2017 and I had to play it for at least 3 hours. This narrows down my list to quite a few games. It makes it easier to work with too.

The first two games that I scrap from my list are two amazing 3DS titles. Those are Metroid Samus Returns and Ever Oasis. Both games are great, but I felt that I enjoyed other titles more this year on the 3DS.

Now, I’m left for the 3DS with the amazing titles of Corpse Party and the new Layton game. Since the Corpse Party game is a more expanded port/remake of the PSP version of the game, I’m going to put the new Layton game in favor of the handheld games. The first nominee is Layton’s, Mystery Journey.

In terms of systems where I can play the newly released games on, I think I can still count the Wii U. While barely any games released this year for the platform, one of the biggest titles ever made on the platform. I’m talking about The Legend Of Zelda – Breath Of The Wild.

This game was finally released after years of waiting. I’m assuming that the needed all this time to polish up this game. It’s an extremely large game and there is a lot to do in the game.

Now, I do know that this game got a lot of prizes at the Game Awards this year, it got even Game of the Year from the press and critics at that show. But, will it get my spot for my game of the year? Well, keep reading this article to get your answer. Unless you spoiled yourself and already read the bottom of the article to get your answer.

But before I can say which is my game of the year, I do have to look at the PC. I have also played a ton of games on the PC this year. Games that were released in the past and games released this year. If I have to pick one game for the best game this year on PC, it has to be “A Hat In Time“.

This game surprised me to no end! I’m still amazed at how much fun this game is. This game also knew a long development process and it’s quite clear that the developers really want this game to be the best it can be. They try and fix reported bugs as quickly as they can. They also talk to their fans over at their Discord server.

Also, I’m waiting for the upcoming DLC that this game is going to get in the near future with more vanilla content. Meanwhile, I’m keeping myself busy with various mods and trying to 100% complete the game and get all achievements. For my game of the year pick on PC, I have to say “A Hat In Time”.

Now, let’s think about that, what game shall I put as my game of the year in 2017? Now, I think it’s best that I only pick a game that I have already beaten. That means that Layton’s Mystery Journey falls off my list.

This means that the selection is between Breath of The Wild and A Hat In Time. Now, I’m going to surprise a lot of you readers. If you keep in mind that I’m such a big Zelda fan and I have put over 120 hours into the game. While I only put roughly 20 hours into A Hat In Time and it’s a new IP.

But, my game of the year pick has to go to one game, a game that won by an extremely small margin. And the winner is:

A Hat In Time

Why not Breath of the Wild?

Oh yes. A Hat In Time. Now, why didn’t I pick Breath Of The Wild as my game of the year? Why does a Zelda fan pick a different game than a Zelda game as his game of the year? Now, let me explain where I’m coming from here.

First of all, I think that some mechanics of BOTW don’t really fit the Zelda Universe. I know that the Zelda formula needed some changes and some new ideas, but I feel like they changed a bit too much. Personally, I adore the open world and all the various things you can do in the world, but still.

I miss the lengthy dungeons and unlocking every new skill in a sort of order. Now, what I mean here is that this game misses two big elements. One is the large dungeons since the divine beasts aren’t long enough. In addition to that, I feel like the first part of the game is just, too restrictive. All the powers you can use in the game are given to you at the start of the game.

I would have loved a way to discover the world and discover some areas and find those powers myself. This would have been a much better way to introduce the player to the mechanics.

In addition to that, I feel like the game is a bit too big for its own good. I’m not complaining that there are too many or too few contents, but I feel like some shrines and some Korok seeds were a bit uninspired. For example, I felt that there were too many “Tests of Strenght” shrines.

I think I can explain myself the best by saying that Breath of The Wild misses something in my opinion. I think the issue I have with the game is that it is too repetitive. Please, don’t misunderstand me now. I’m not saying that the game is bad or that it isn’t a Zelda game.

After you looked for a few shrines, did a few Korok Seeds or did a few side quests, you have seen all the main mechanics. Of course, they are used in different situations, but some things just feel the same with a different coat of paint.

Also, after a while, you feel like you are overpowered and you can handle anything in the game. There is barely anything the game can throw at you to surprise you. Besides, powering up the enemies you find in the wild.

Besides that, I do feel that the game missed something big. Why can’t I have two save files without having to fear to lose access to one? If that’s possible, please tell me. Since I want to start a new save file in Master mode without being afraid that I lose access to my “non-master” mode save file.

Why “A Hat In Time”?

So, why did I pick “A Hat In Time” as my favorite game of 2017? Well, the first reason is that it’s the biggest surprise for me this year. I didn’t know I would have so much fun playing that game.

So, remember that I kinda felt that BOTW was repetitive after a while? Well, A Hat In Time doesn’t have that at all in my opinion. Sure, each level requires a healthy dose of platforming, but you are doing something different each and every time.

In one world you are in a world between two different movie directors and in the other world, you are running errands for that big creepy monster that stole your soul. The game oozes with personality and cuteness. Even the finer details like wearing a raincoat during the rainy levels and playing with dolls as an idle animation is the strength of this game.

While it’s a rather short game, I feel like everything is polished to near perfection. I rarely felt that I was unable to do something in the game.

This game made me even enjoy stealth gameplay, something I personally dislike a lot of games. But, Gears For Breakfast made it quite a lot of fun to play. Thank you view cones for that!

For some reason, since I started to play “A Hat In Time”, the game sort of stuck with me. I lost count how many times I listened to the soundtrack while I was at work and I had various tracks from it as my ringtone or my alarm.

In addition to that, I had various scenes from this game as my desktop wallpaper on my computers and my smartphone.

The competition was fierce this year, but I’m still surprised that this game didn’t make it on barely any big awards list. For real, I did an experiment and that is to google “Top 10 PC games of 2017” and looked at all the lists that the first three pages gave me. And I found this game only on 2 lists!

Maybe I’m fanboying a bit too much about this game, but I feel like this game doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. This game proves that it’s possible to make an amazing game using crowdfunding.

While it’s extremely hard for me to choose between Breath Of The Wild and A Hat In Time, I feel that, in my opinion, A Hat In Time is just the better game. Not by much.

If I would be allowed to pick two games, I would surely pick Breath of The Wild AND A Hat In Time as my game of the year for 2017. Yet, both games deserve the praise and recognition they get. Both games were delayed several times to polish the game and make the game better for it.

Both games were amazing games and made me so happy to be a gamer. These two experiences were the best times I had in 2017, gaming-wise. If you feel a bit salty for my pick, maybe this can help. My game of the year from triple-A developers is Breath of the Wild and my game of the year from indie developers is A Hat In Time.

So, that was my answer to today’s question. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing this article. I hope to be able to see you in another article on my blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

 

Creative Christmas #11 – I Promise That …

It’s the final day of the year. So, it’s time to make promises what we shall try to accomplish next year. If we do this collab with LaterLevels again next year, I might be able to come up with an overall theme, but for now, I’ll stick with the theme I have been using. A random introduction where I talked about not having a theme and getting distracted by the question asked. Oh, I shouldn’t have revealed this until the end of the series? So, tomorrow will be the final question in this collab? Oh. Well, let’s first answer today’s question.

Midnight rolls around and it’s time to pick a New Year gaming resolution to see you through the next 12 months. What’s your choice for 2018?

If I’m allowed to make promises with myself of what I want to accomplish in 2018 in terms of gaming, I think I’m going to repeat something I said in my “10 games I look forward to playing in 2018” list.

I want to play a lot of games in my backlog. I do have a long backlog of games that I still want to play and/or beat. Thankfully, a few of those games get a port or a remake of a system that I own, or about to own. If you want to know more about that, read my previous article.

Will this mean that I stop collecting for a year? Not at all! I’m actually going to try and find copies of games I’m missing in a series. For example, I recently bought Skipper And Skeeto 3, since I didn’t own that game yet.

If you don’t know Skipper & Skeeto, I wouldn’t blame you. Since it’s a Danish edutainment title made by Ivanoff. The Belgian company Transposia brought this series to Belgium and the Netherlands. I live in Belgium, by the way.

So, in 2018 I’m going to continue to try and complete my Transposia collection. I have around 36 games already, but that’s far from complete. Since they brought so many games here to Belgium and the Netherlands, I can’t count them all.

Besides that, I’m going to try and finish the index I was working on. The last index I made from my collection dates back to three years ago. And since then, my collection has grown quite a lot. Besides that, it’s just a simple word document listing all the titles I own. I want to create something bigger, a sort of Excel sheet I can use to quickly filter if I own the game already or not.

But, that’s a project for when I find the time for it. If I would finish that, it would take quite a long time to produce and develop. Since I want to be able to also draw numbers out of that file and that means I need to set it up quite well or otherwise it will have wrong numbers.

Besides that, I’m planning to buy a Nintendo Switch in March 2018. While I’m a huge Nintendo fan, I wanted to wait a year to buy the Nintendo Switch.

The reason for that is, I wanted to see the system first build up a library of games I’m interested in before I went out and bought the system.

Now, I have a lot of titles I’m looking forward to being playing DooM and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I’m actually tempted by buying The Legend Of Zelda – Breath of the Wild again for the Switch, to be able to take the game with me. But, on the other hand, I think my money would be the best spent elsewhere since the library of games for the Switch is large and other games deserve my attention.

You know, this is the curse of being a game blogger and (retro) game collector. I keep finding new games to play and enjoy, and I rarely finish them. Including some developer requests, I keep enjoying myself with those games quite a lot, but I don’t finish the games.

In conclusion, I want to create a database/index of my collection that I’m happy with. I’m also planning to buy a Switch in March of next year. Besides that, I’m planning to try and finish a lot of the games on my backlog that I still want to play or beat games that I haven’t finished yet.

So, I’m quite curious if I’ll be able to do all these things in 2018. Since I’m quite a busy fellow and I don’t always have the time to finish every game I started. Maybe I should try and do something about me being so curious to buy new games.

In any case, you will be able to continue to read my adventures through the land of video games by simply reading my blog and/or my twitter feed. So, thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Creative Christmas #10 – Time to fit a new outfit!

2017 is coming to an end. The final two days have started and everybody is looking back at what an eventful year it has been. Various top ten lists are appearing left and right and it’s time that I do the same. Today and tomorrow will have a top ten list published at 8PM about this year and the upcoming year. In any case, I’m not saying this to hide the fact that I don’t have a theme for these articles yet. So, that’s why I’m first going to get dressed and answer today’s question. So, LaterLevels, what question do you have in store for today’s collab?

You’ve been invited to a swanky New Year’s Eve party but have nothing suitable to wear! Which video game character do you call to ask if you can borrow an outfit?

While I can choose for an easy answer and say the suit of Professor Layton and go all classy, I think that would be too easy. I think the better question to ask myself is why do I want to cosplay as?

Since I personally think that only borrowing the costume of said character would be too easy. As an amateur actor, I would also like to play the role of the character I’m using the clothes from you know?

Oh, if you didn’t know, I’m an amateur actor. I have played a role in 5 plays, where I play one time a lead role. It was quite a lot of fun to do. So, whenever I can act out a role, I don’t hesitate to do so. As long as my self-confidence is there to back me up.

One character I would love to cosplay as is Niko from OneShot. For real, this is an adorable chap. While I would love to talk about him and his game, it would spoil way too much. For real, if you are into unique adventures and puzzle games, check out OneShot. You will understand why I fell in love with this game so much.

Another character I want to cosplay as is Satoshi from Corpse Party. I mean, this would be a great choice for me. Even when he isn’t wearing anything special, I would be so surprised if people recognized me from Corpse Party.

Satoshi is such a caring soul. Especially when his younger sister is involved in something. I can relate to his personality quite a lot and he is one of my favorite characters from the series. I only wish that the Corpse Party was a bit more mainstream so I would be easier recognized when I cosplayed as him.

Somebody who would be more noticeable would be either Phoenix Wright or Miles Edgeworth. To be honest, I would also enjoy cosplaying as Detective Gumshoe instead of them. I dunno why, but the cosplaying as somebody else from the series; those three clicked more with me. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, they are characters in the Ace Attorney franchise.

The biggest issue is that if I wanted to cosplay as somebody, I wouldn’t take the obvious ones. I would take somebody who isn’t easy to recognize or hasn’t a million cosplays of that character already.

Oh, I think of something fun. Hey, LaterLevels, what about I cosplay as this guy? Would you cosplay as Elaine? You may even pick which generation you like best!

For those who don’t understand what I’m getting at, Kim from LaterLevels is a really big fan of Monkey Island and the image above displays Guybrush Threepwood from that series.

But, I think I’m going to turn the question around. Who do you think would be a great cosplay or have a great outfit for me? Let me know down in the comments! Also, who do you would have their costume or cosplay at? That’s also something you can put in the comments.

In any case, thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Creative Christmas #9 – Holiday Gameplay

Today in the collab with LaterLevels, I have to answer another question. A question in a series called “Creative Christmas” and I still don’t have a theme for my articles yet. So, what should I do? Should I just give up finding a theme or should I keep looking? Maybe I should sit down on the sofa and think about it… Perhaps a great idea will come to me. But, I think better if I play a game. So, it might be a great idea that I take this controller and start playing this game. What was the question today again?

 The presents have been opened and dinner has been eaten, so you’ve got a bit of time for gaming while Gran is snoozing on the sofa. What’s the best video game to play during the holidays?

So, what’s the best game to play during the holidays? Well, I prefer longer games to play during holidays. Games that can take you a couple of hours or days to complete. If you would finish a game too soon, what else should you play during the holidays?

In the past, I used to play one game and fully devote my time to it. Even when I had such a big collection, I wanted to see everything that game had to offer before I went to the next one. Nowadays, I play a lot of different games in a week. That has two reasons, first of all, I like the variation in what I play in a week. One day I feel like playing an RPG game and another day I more like playing a puzzle game.

So, what game can hold you over during the holidays? Here is a list of games that can be great time wasters to play during the holidays.

One,  a sandbox game like Minecraft or Terraria. Since these games have a randomly generated world, there is always something new to discover. Personally, I prefer Minecraft over Terreria, since I enjoy the more relaxed focus of Minecraft compared to the bosses and such in Terreria. I’m not saying that Terreria is bad in any sense of the word, I enjoy Minecraft more.

Two, an RTS game like Age Of Empires III or Europa Universalis IV. I can enjoy myself a lot of rounds in RTS games. Every time I choose a different nation to play with, the game will go completely differently. Even when I choose the same nation twice. I really enjoy the gameplay of RTS games, even while I’m not the best in the combat system. I’m also unable to beat the AI at the harder difficulties. But, honestly, I don’t really care. I’m enjoying myself and that’s all that counts.

Three, an (open world) RPG. It speaks for itself that an (open world) RPG can give you hours upon hours of fun. I’m talking about RPG’s that have multiple endings like Stella Glow or Mass Effect. But, games where the focus is more on the open world also count in this category like Breath of the Wild or Fallout.

Four, party games like Mario Party or Mario Kart. I mean, do I even need to explain myself here? Games that you play while you are together with your family and/or friends?

I think I could make this list a lot longer, but the question is: “what’s the best game to play during the holiday season.” I thought about it for a while, and to be honest, I think there isn’t one single game that fits the bill perfectly.

I use the holidays as a way to either catch up with my backlog or to have long playing sessions of games I wanted to complete.

Also, the answer changes each holiday season I think. There are a few games I replay each and every year because the nostalgia is just too strong. Games like Phantom Hourglass, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and the Zelda Oracle games are perfect examples.

You know, this will sound extremely cheesy, but I think it’s best that you play a game that you enjoy and can relax with. The holiday season is a time to be happy and relax. Even when it’s together with family and/or friends. Just make amazing new memories and perhaps you will be able to find that one game you can play during the holiday season. The game that can have that kind of a special meaning to you.

So, that’s my answer. Told you it would sound cheesy. I do hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

 

Creative Christmas #8: Nomnomnom

So, now that we had the Christmas party and the gifts, I think it’s time for food. Oh, I am not allowed to go on the dinner table when I don’t come up with a theme for these articles? Man, that’s unfair. I’m writing in a creative matter here while you would be able to enjoy the delicious foods served. I’m trying my best to come with a good idea for this LaterLevels collab you know. So, please let me eat while I think of a theme and answer today’s question.

It’s now time to head out to the kitchen to put on your oven gloves and start preparing Christmas dinner. It consists solely of video game food; what’s on the menu?

Besides pre-heated stuff and a few extremely basic things, I haven’t cooked on a day in my life. I haven’t played a lot of games that talk about food either. So, I had to look through my game collection for an answer.

One thing is for sure, most of the things I remember in terms of food are the strange food things happening. Like in Stella Glow, how Lisette’s cooking always turns purple or how Chloe only wants to eat meat in Etrian Odyssey Untold 2.

One game that involves cooking in a way is Minecraft, but that would be a bit cheap to put the food items of that game on the list. Since most of the food items in that game are food items you can eat in real life. Besides the purple fruits, but do you want to teleport to another location each time you take a bite out of your meal.

So, instead of giving a long explanation of which types of food I would like, I think it would be a great idea to make any of the foods in Breath of the Wild. Actually, if you want to make them in real life, don’t worry. I know an excellent blog you can use for that! It’s called Sheikah Plate.

As an appetizer, I could take some glazed veggies, as a main dish I could take some salt-grilled gourmet meat and some apple pie as a desert.

That could be one possibility. Since I’m playing Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 lately, it would be fun to give foods I would love to try in the real world. Here you find an overview of everything in the game. Beware of possible spoilers though when you click that link.

Here are a few screenshots of the pieces of food I would love to try:

Of course, there is a lot more I would love to try from the menu, but eating it all would be impossible I think.

The food in Monster Tale also sounds quite interesting, to be honest. But, you feed it to your monster pet to let it grow. So, I think I better not eat that, since I think there are some special growth hormones in it.

(Talking about food, dear Glados, you still owe me a cake!)

Before I end this, the food I wouldn’t put on my menu are the following:

• Any meat from the Castlevania series. You never know it came from a wall or a monster drop.
• Anything from FallOut, the radiation would be off the charts. No thanks.
• A bottle of Pepsi from the Pepsi Man, that will be shaken up as all heck. So, I don’t want soda in my face.

I think you get the idea. In any case, I think I’ll leave it here. To be honest, I don’t know enough about food to make a decent and long article so, I think this is the best answer that I can come up with. Besides, in almost all the games I play, the food is somewhat realistic so far as I can remember.

So yeah. Forgive me for a shorter article. In any case, I thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing this article. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Creative Christmas #7: Present Time

And we are back with the Creative Christmas series, a collab I’m doing with LaterLevels. To be honest, during the past two days I was too busy with family parties. So, I was unable to think of a theme for this series. Okay, I have to admit that I thought about it, but I wasn’t able to implement. I thought of one where each article was a page in Santa’s diary, but then I wouldn’t answer for myself. Another idea would be where I would talk about if my answer would be in the naughty or kid side of Santa’s book. Well, maybe with the help of a present I can think of a theme. I got a new Mario shirt and a new compressor to blow out electronic material. But what’s this? Another question about presents for me to answer, let’s take a look! 

Your help must have worked, because it’s now Christmas morning and presents are under the tree! There’s a fancy box with your name on it; which gaming-related item are you hoping is inside?

If I would ever be able to get a certain gaming related item, I would have to divide my answer into two parts. First of all, real existing items. Which game-related items would I want that truly exist?

Besides a boatload of games that I want in my collection and a few consoles I want to have and start collecting for, let say which piece of merchandise do I really want to have?

For me personally, I would love to have some more merchandise of the Bioshock series. I know that there are some nice looking t-shirts and bags out there.

If you would give me some merch from the Bioshock series, even when I already have it, I would always be happy. The Bioshock series is such a great series that is near and dear to my heart.

The same counts for merch from the Zelda series. I’m in love with the Zelda series and I would love to own a bit more shirts and merch of it. Oh, or the mangas that I don’t own of “the Zelda series” yet would also be a nice gift to get.

Now, there are a few games I know that there is barely any or no official merchandise on the market. But I would love some merch for it anyways. These games include Ace Attorney, Monster Tale, Stella Glow and the Zero Escape series.

Actually, if you ever need to give a gift to me; anything game related merch would do the trick for me. Because I’m a game collector I enjoy getting something game-related. You would make me even happier if you relate it to a game series I like. And you know those series if you read my blog or talk to me.

Now we come to part 2 of my answer. What if I’m able to get a fictional game item in the real world. This is going to be interesting.

You know what would be nuts? If I would be able to get any of the transformation masks for The Legend Of Zelda Majora’s Mask into the real world. Then again, what practical use would it have besides the cool factor? Besides, it wouldn’t be that much fun since I would have to use these while nobody sees me or I would be used for experiments and all that jazz.

Then I thought about getting the Harp of Ages or the Rod Of Seasons from The Legend Of Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons. It would be so close to reverse the flow of time or change the seasons at will.

While messing with time presents a whole different host of problems, the same can be said for the Rod Of Seasons. If I would be able to change the seasons at will, I might destroy the planet with it. So, that’s not a good idea either. Besides, the rod only seems to work on sawn-off tree trumps and those aren’t around too often in my area.

The notebook from Scribblenauts would be pretty interesting to own as well. I would be able to summon what I want and when I want it. Then again, if this would fall into the wrong hands, dangerous things can happen and we would live in a strange world.

While it would be amazing to have any video game item in the real world, I think it would cause a whole host of other problems that might bring me into greater trouble. If the problems are solvable, you would have to put the practicality into question. Since not everything from the land of video games would have a use in the real world.

So, if I would be able to avoid any trouble, I would love to have the items I listed above these paragraphs. Yet, I think that the answer that was expected in the questions was more the 1st part of this article. I see the second part of this article more as a fun thought expirement.

That’s my answer for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

You can find other bloggers their answers here.